CS 415: Programming
Languages
Chapter 1
Aaron Bloomfield
Fall 2005
The first computers
Scales – computed relative weight of two items
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Computed if the first item’s weight was less than, equal to, or
greater than the second item’s weight
Abacus – performed mathematical computations
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Primarily thought of as Chinese, but also Japanese, Mayan,
Russian, and Roman versions
Can do square roots and cube roots
Stonehenge
Computer Size
ENIAC then…
ENIAC today…
With computers (small) size does matter!
Why study programming
languages?
Become a better software engineer
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Understand how to use language features
Appreciate implementation issues
Better background for language selection
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Familiar with range of languages
Understand issues / advantages / disadvantages
Better able to learn languages
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You might need to know a lot
Why study programming
languages?
Better understanding of implementation issues
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How is “this feature” implemented?
Why does “this part” run so slowly?
Better able to design languages
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Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it…
Why are there so many
programming languages?
There are thousands!
Evolution
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Structured languages -> OO programming
Special purposes
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Lisp for symbols; Snobol for strings; C for systems;
Prolog for relationships
Personal preference
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Programmers have their own personal tastes
Expressive power
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Some features allow you to express your ideas better
Why are there so many
programming languages?
Easy to use
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Especially for teaching / learning tasks
Ease of implementation
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Easy to write a compiler / interpreter for
Good compilers
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Fortran in the 50’s and 60’s
Economics, patronage
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Cobol and Ada, for example
Programming domains
Scientific applications
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Using the computer as a large calculator
Fortran and friends, some Algol, APL
Using the computer for symbol manipulation
Mathematica
Business applications
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Data processing and business procedures
Cobol, some PL/1, RPG, spreadsheets
Systems programming
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Building operating systems and utilities
C, PL/S, ESPOL, Bliss, some Algol and derivitaves
Programming domains
Parallel programming
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Parallel and distributed systems
Ada, CSP, Modula, DP, Mentat/Legion
Artificial intelligence
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Uses symbolic rather than numeric computations
Lists as main data structure
Flexibility (code = data)
Lisp in 1959, Prolog in the 1970s
Scripting languages
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A list of commands to be executed
UNIX shell programming, awk, tcl, Perl
Programming domains
Education
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Languages designed to facilitate teaching
Pascal, BASIC, Logo
Special purpose
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Other than the above…
Simulation
Specialized equipment control
String processing
Visual languages
Programming paradigms
You have already seen assembly language
We will study five language paradigms:
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Top-down (Algol 60 and Fortran)
Functional (Scheme and/or OCaml)
Logic (Prolog)
Object oriented (Smalltalk)
Aspect oriented (AspectJ)
Programming language history
Pseudocodes (195X) – Many
Fortran (195X) – IBM, Backus
Lisp (196x) – McCarthy
Algol (1958) – Committee (led to Pascal, Ada)
Cobol (196X) – Hopper
Functional programming – FP, Scheme, Haskell, ML
Logic programming – Prolog
Object oriented programming – Smalltalk, C++, Python,
Java
Aspect oriented programming – AspectJ, AspectC++
Parallel / non-deterministic programming
Compilation vs. Translation
Translation: does a ‘mechanical’ translation of the source
code
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No deep analysis of the syntax/semantics of the code
Compilation: does a
translation of the code
thorough
understanding
and
A compiler/translator changes a program from one
language into another
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C compiler: from C into assembly
An assembler then translates it into machine language
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Java compiler: from Java code to Java bytecode
The Java interpreter then runs the bytecode
Compilation stages
Scanner
Parser
Semantic analysis
Intermediate code generation
Machine-independent code improvement (optional)
Target code generation
Machine-specific code improvement (optional)
For many compilers, the result is assembly
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Which then has to be run through an assembler
These stages are machine-independent!
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The generate “intermediate code”
Compilation: Scanner
Recognizes the ‘tokens’ of a program
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Example tokens: ( 75 main int { return ; foo
Lexical errors are detected here
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More on this in a future lecture
Compilation: Parser
Puts the tokens together into a pattern
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void main ( int argc , char ** argv ) {
This line has 11 tokens
It is the beginning of a method
Syntatic errors are detected here
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When the tokens are not in the correct order:
int int foo ;
This line has 4 tokens
After the type (int), the parser expects a variable
name
Not another type
Compilation: Semantic analysis
Checks for semantic correctness
A semantic error:
foo = 5;
int foo;
In C (and most languages), a variable has to be
declared before it is used
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Note that this is syntactically correct
As both lines are valid lines as far as the parser is concerned
Compilation: Intermediate code
generation (and improvement)
Almost all compilers generate intermediate code
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This allows part of the compiler to be machineindependent
That code can then be optimized
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Optimize for speed, memory usage, or program
footprint
Compilation: Target code
generation (and improvement)
The intermediate code is then translated into the
target code
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For most compilers, the target code is assembly
For Java, the target code is Java bytecode
That code can then be further optimized
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Optimize for speed, memory usage, or program
footprint